useR 2016 tutorial?

[Ben Goodrich]

The main R conference is at Stanford next summer

http://user2016.org/

and is soliciting proposals by January 6 for 3-hour tutorials. Do we want to submit one for rstan(arm) and / or do something else Stan-related in Silicon Valley in conjunction with the conference?

Ben

[Bob Carpenter]

Is anyone planning on going anyway? It's the kind of thing
we can pay for out of the Sloan foundation funding --- looks like
this one we pay for, probably including have to register for
the conference itself. Here's the very limited call:

We invite all members of the R community to submit proposals
for three hour tutorials on relevant, R topics. Proposals
should include a brief description of the tutorial including
its goals, a detailed outline, a justification for the
importance of the tutorial, a description of the intended
audience and an indication of the required background knowledge
of the attendees. To be considered, proposals must be received
at useR...@R-project.org before midnight PST, January 10, 2016.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

We could also submit a talk --- it looks pretty open-ended.

- Bob

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[Ben Goodrich]

I'm a bit on the fence about going all that way just to do a 3-hour tutorial, although it is a huge opportunity to raise awareness of Stan. If we could kill two birds with one plane trip, it would definitely be worth it.

[Andrew Gelman]

I think I spoke at useR once and they paid my travel. So I think they’d pay for a 3-hr course. Just a nominal amount, I’m sure, but I don’t think we’d pay.
If we are doing it, I could contact those Google people I taught for before, and see if they might be interested in a Stan course.
Also, should we be organizing an annual Stan conference?
A

[Daniel Lee]

I think we should be thinking about running our own conference. Mike and I joked / discussed having a splinter meeting at NIPS, but in all seriousness we have enough users to warrant it within the next few years.


P.S. Not it.

[Bob Carpenter]

> On Oct 26, 2015, at 10:20 PM, Daniel Lee <bea...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> I think we should be thinking about running our own conference. Mike and I joked / discussed having a splinter meeting at NIPS, but in all seriousness we have enough users to warrant it within the next few years.
>
>
> P.S. Not it.

:-) You should've never said you liked to organize events.
Or did you just say you were good at it?

It is a shitload of work. They had a lot of volunteers at
Julia Con. Can't recall if they used EventBrite for fees.

- Bob

[Bob Carpenter]

3 hours is longer to speak than most people who'll make
the trip :-) But I take it the second bird isn't attending
useR itself.

There are a bunch of social science stats people spread
among Berkeley and Stanford --- so you could always meet
people and give talks, too.

And lots of companies, though I only know the natural language
people at them, not statisticians.

- Bob

> On Oct 26, 2015, at 7:24 PM, Ben Goodrich <goodri...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm a bit on the fence about going all that way just to do a 3-hour tutorial, although it is a huge opportunity to raise awareness of Stan. If we could kill two birds with one plane trip, it would definitely be worth it.
>
>

[Dustin Tran]

Also fyi it’s 3 days after icml next year (but that one’s at our home base, in nyc)

Dustin

[Michael Betancourt]

I’d consider doing it but June is a busy month (ISBA is two weeks
before and we’re already committed to doing a tutorial there).
I’m sure there will be plenty of networking to be done at use
itself and with enough lead time there are plenty of seminar
opportunities in the Bay Area (I gave a talk in Berkeley almost
three years ago and apparently it spawned a bit astrophysics
project using Stan that just came out a few weeks ago). Besides,
a six hour flight is downright pleasant once you’ve done a few
eleven hour flights...

[Bob Carpenter]

> On Oct 27, 2015, at 5:21 AM, Michael Betancourt <betan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I’d consider doing it but June is a busy month (ISBA is two weeks
> before and we’re already committed to doing a tutorial there).
> I’m sure there will be plenty of networking to be done at use
> itself and with enough lead time there are plenty of seminar
> opportunities in the Bay Area (I gave a talk in Berkeley almost
> three years ago and apparently it spawned a bit astrophysics
> project using Stan that just came out a few weeks ago).

That is super cool. I thought that looked like a different
group of astrophysicists.

> Besides,
> a six hour flight is downright pleasant once you’ve done a few
> eleven hour flights...

:-) Exactly how we felt after Australia.

- Bob

[Ben Goodrich]

On Monday, October 26, 2015 at 7:27:21 PM UTC-4, Andrew Gelman wrote:

I think I spoke at useR once and they paid my travel.  So I think they’d pay for a 3-hr course.  Just a nominal amount, I’m sure, but I don’t think we’d pay.
If we are doing it, I could contact those Google people I taught for before, and see if they might be interested in a Stan course.

I'll probably apply to do a tutorial and if it is accepted, then we can try to put something together in the Bay Area for the adjacent day(s). Rasmus emailed me to say that he was given $700 for his tutorial last year with BUGS, so that would at least cover expenses.

Ben